At my suggestion, my husband and I moved his father to live in a granny annexe of our home. This was for two reasons. First, he was experiencing health issues and getting visibly older and we thought he’d end up needing to live with us eventually. Second, we wanted to start a family and I naively thought we could have some live-in childcare.

We now have a toddler and although my father-in-law is useful in many ways he isn’t able to provide childcare as he is emotionally and physically frailer than I thought, and we are also having to deal with his very sensitive and difficult moods that are exacerbated by his ageing.

I don’t feel I signed up to manage his emotional regulation while navigating the same for my young child but would feel like a monster if I suggested we live separately again. I also feel this is my fault for having unrealistic expectations about how he could help me, and wasn’t prepared that I’d be “sandwich parenting”. What should I do?

Eleanor says: Caring for your husband’s father and your child at the same time gives you twice the load, double the guilt and half the capacity. It’s no wonder you’re finding this a big transition.

From your letter, it seems as though you expected and hoped you’d get a childcare arrangement, not that you’d discussed or agreed to one. While you didn’t sign up to manage his emotional regulation, you did sign up to have him in the house, and the considerations that led to that decision were yours to check beforehand. So I think the fact you invited this change does mean you have some additional responsibility.

It’s not unlimited, though. You don’t have to live in misery. You don’t have to compromise your child’s wellbeing or seriously damage your own. The obligations you have right now can outweigh the ones you took on in the past.

Whatever happens, it sounds as though you need better information going forward. Important things turned up as surprises; his frailty, the childcare, the emotional swings.

As you decide where you go from here, I think you need a detailed inventory of the facts. What are his physical limitations? When can you expect they’ll change? What kinds of care will he need, when? How much will it cost? Who’s paying? What of that changes depending on where he lives? How will continuing in this arrangement affect your child, your own health – how many hours a week will you have to yourself? When? What part of this is your husband in charge of? No more preventable surprises.

I know it’s hard to talk about this because its centre of gravity is the stuff we really don’t like to acknowledge. Death. Illness. The fact that wanting to do it all might not be enough to mean we can. The possibility that there are limits to what we’ll do for the people we love. But we have to know things before we make decisions, otherwise we’re just gambling.

Second, help helps. You face a huge caretaking load. It’s really important to not get isolated in that. Most people care for older relatives only once or twice, so it can be extremely lonely: frailty shows up in your own family and it’s the first time you deal with it. But there’s a whole crisis off stage, of housing and retirement and healthcare, filled with other people who can at least understand what you’re dealing with. At minimum, make sure you’re sharing this load with your husband. And the case to involve as much help and expertise as you can isn’t just to give yourself a break – there are some things you shouldn’t handle alone, like whether his mood swings are normal or a sign of cognitive decline.

Last, I think it’s really important you don’t think of this as sandwich parenting. You’re sandwiched, yes, but you’re not his parent and he’s not your child. It will be important for your and his dignity not to think that. It’s hard enough being seen primarily as “old”, a thing to be taken care of. What was his youth like, the parts you didn’t see, the life before you knew him – who would you like to be seen as, if you lived with your child and their spouse in 30 years?

Maybe it’s fair to ask him to move out – be led by what’s best now rather than what you took on in the past. But the decision matters less than how you make it: with a lot more information and discussion.

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